Dorn Of The Mountains Read online

  The yellow plain had only appeared to be level. Roy led down into a shallow ravine, where a tiny stream meandered, and he followed this around to the left, coming at length to a point where cedars and dwarf pines formed a little grove. Here, as the others rode up, he sat cross-legged in his saddle, and waited.

  “We’ll hang up a while,” he said. “Reckon you’re tired?”

  “I’m hungry, but not tired yet,” replied Bo.

  Helen dismounted to find that walking was something she had apparently lost the power to do. Bo laughed at her, but she, too, was awkward when once more upon the ground.

  Then Roy got down. Helen was surprised to find him lame. He caught her quick glance.

  “A hoss threw me once an’ rolled on me. Only broke my collarbone, five ribs, one arm, an’ my bowlegs in two places!”

  Notwithstanding this evidence that he was a cripple as he stood there tall and lithe in his homespun ragged garments, he looked singularly powerful and capable.

  “Reckon walkin’ around would be good for you girls,” advised Dorn. “If you ain’t stiff yet, you’ll be soon. An’ walkin’ will help. Don’t go far. I’ll call when breakfast’s ready.”

  A little while later the girls were whistled in from their walk and found campfire and meal awaiting them. Roy was sitting cross-legged like an Indian in front of a tarpaulin upon which was spread a homely but substantial fare. Helen’s quick eye detected a cleanliness and thoroughness she had scarcely expected to find in the camp cooking of men of the wilds. Moreover the fare was good. She ate heartily, and as for Bo’s appetite she was inclined to be as much ashamed of that as amused at it. The young men were all eyes, assiduous in their ser vice to the girls, but speaking seldom. It was not lost upon Helen how Dorn’s gray gaze went often down across the open country. She divined apprehension from it rather than saw much expression in it.

  “I…declare,” burst out Bo, when she could not eat any more, “this isn’t believable. I’m dreaming…. Nell, the black horse you rode is the prettiest I ever saw.”

  Ranger, with the other animals, was grazing along the little brook. Packs and saddles had been removed. The men sat leisurely. There was little evidence of hurried flight. Yet Helen could not cast off uneasiness. Roy might have been deep and careless with a motive to spare the girls anxiety, but Dorn seemed incapable of anything he did not absolutely mean.

  “Rest or walk,” he advised the girls. “We’ve got forty miles to ride before dark.”

  Helen preferred to rest, but Bo walked about, petting the horses and prying into the packs. She was curious and eager.

  Dorn and Roy talked in low tones while they cleaned up the utensils and packed them away in a heavy canvas bag.

  “You really expect Anson’ll strike my trail this mornin’?” Dorn was asking.

  “I shore do,” replied Roy.

  “An’ how do you figure that so soon?”

  “How’d you figure it…if you was Snake Anson?” queried Roy in reply.

  “Depends on that rider from Magdalena,” said Dorn soberly. “Although it’s likely I’d’ve seen them wheel tracks an’ hoss tracks made where we turned off. But supposin’ he does.”

  “Milt, listen. I told you Snake met us boys face to face day before yesterday in Show Down. An’ he was plumb curious.”

  “But he missed seein’ or hearin’ about me,” replied Dorn.

  “Mebbe he did an’ mebbe he didn’t. Anyway what’s the difference whether he finds out this mornin’ or this evenin’?”

  “Then you ain’t expectin’ a fight if Anson holds up the stage?”

  “Wal, he’d have to shoot first, which ain’t likely. John an’ Hal, since thet shootin’ scrape a year ago, have been sort of gun shy. Joe might get riled…. But I reckon the best we can be shore of is a delay. An’ it’d be sense not to count on thet.”

  “Then you hang up here an’ keep watch for Anson’s gang…say long enough so’s to be sure they’d be in sight if they find our tracks this mornin’. Makin’ sure one way or another, you ride cross-country to Big Spring, where I’ll camp to night.”

  Roy nodded approval of that suggestion. Then without more words both men picked up ropes and went after the horses. Helen was watching Dorn so that, when Bo cried out in great excitement, Helen turned to see a savage yellow little mustang standing straight up on his hind legs and pawing the air. Roy had roped him and was now dragging him into camp.

  “Nell, look at that for a wild pony!” exclaimed Bo.

  Helen busied herself getting well out of the way of the infuriated mustang. Roy dragged him to a cedar nearby.

  “Come now, Buckskin,” said Roy soothingly, and he slowly approached the quivering animal. He went closer, hand over hand on the lasso. Buckskin showed the whites of his eyes and also his white teeth. But he stood while Roy loosened the loop and, slipping it down over his head, fastened it in a complicated knot around his nose.

  “Thet’s a hackamore,” he said, indicating the knot. “He’s never had a bridle an’ never will have one, I reckon.”

  “You don’t ride him?” queried Helen.

  “Sometimes I do,” replied Roy with a smile. “Would you girls like to try him?”

  “Excuse me,” answered Helen.

  “Gee!” ejaculated Bo. “He looks like a devil. But I’d tackle him…if you think I could.”

  The wild leaven of the West had found quick root in Bo Rayner.

  “Wal, I’m sorry, but I reckon I’ll not let you…for a spell,” replied Roy dryly. “He pitches somethin’ powerful bad.”

  “Pitches. You mean bucks.”

  “I reckon…. I was afraid he’d run off with you-all when you start.”

  In the next half hour Helen saw more and learned more about how horses of the open range were handled than she had ever heard of. Excepting Ranger, and Roy’s bay, and the white pony Bo rode, the rest of the horses had actually to be roped and hauled in to camp to be saddled and packed. It was a job for fearless strong men, and one that called for patience as well as arms of iron. So that for Helen Rayner the thing succeeding the confidence she had placed in these men was respect. In an observing woman that half hour told much.

  When all was in readiness for a start, Dorn mounted and said significantly: “Roy, I’ll look for you about sundown. I hope no sooner.”

  “Wal, it’d be bad if I had to rustle along soon with bad news. Let’s hope for the best. We’ve been shore lucky so far. Now you take to the pine mats in the woods an’ hide your trail.”

  Dorn turned away. Then the girls bade Roy good bye and followed. Soon Roy and his buckskin-colored mustang were lost to sight round a clump of trees.

  The unhampered horses led the way, scattered somewhat; the pack animals trotted after them, and the riders were close behind. All traveled at a jog trot. And this gait made the packs bob up and down and from side to side. The sun fell warmly at Helen’s back and the wind lost its frosty coldness that almost appeared damp, for a dry sweet fragrance. Dorn drove up the shallow valley that showed timber on the levels above, and a black border of timber some few miles ahead. It did not take long to reach the edge of the forest.

  Helen wondered why the big pines grew so far on that plain and no farther. Probably the growth had to do with snow, but as the ground was level she could not see why the edge of the woods should have come just there.

  They rode into the forest.

  To Helen it seemed a strange critical entrance into another world that she was destined to know and to love. The pines were big, brown-barked, seamed, and knotted, with no typical conformation except a majesty and beauty. They grew far apart. Few small pines and little underbrush flourished beneath them. The floor of this forest appeared remarkable in that it consisted of patches of high silvery grass and wide brown areas of pine needles. These manifestly were what Roy had meant by pine mats. Here and there a fallen monarch lay riven or rotting. Helen was presently struck with the silence of the forest and the strange fact that the horse
s seldom made any sound at all, and, when they did, it was a cracking of dead twig or thud of hoof on log. Likewise she became aware of a springy nature of the ground. And then she saw that the pine mats gave like rubber cushions under the hoofs of the horses and, after they had passed, sprang back to place again leaving no track. Helen could not see a sign of a trail they left behind. Indeed, it would take a sharp eye to follow Dorn through that forest. This knowledge was infinitely comforting to Helen, and for the first time since the flight had begun she felt a loosening of a weight upon mind and heart. It left her free for some of the appreciation she might have had in this wonderful ride under happier circumstances.

  Bo, however, seemed too young, too wild, too intense to mind what the circumstances were. She responded to reality. Helen began to suspect that the girl would welcome any adventure, and Helen knew surely now that Bo was a true Auchincloss. For three long days Helen had felt a constraint with which heretofore she had been unfamiliar, and for the last hours it had been submerged under dread. But it must be, she concluded, blood like her sister’s, pounding at her veins to be set free, to race and to burn.

  Bo loved action. She had an eye for beauty, but she was not contemplative. She was now helping Dorn drive the horses and hold them in rather close formation. She rode well and as yet showed no symptoms of fatigue or pain. Helen began to be aware of both, but not enough yet to limit her interest.

  A wonderful forest without birds did not seem real to her. Of all living creatures in Nature, Helen liked birds best and she knew many and could imitate the songs of a few. But here under the stately pines there were no birds. Squirrels, however, began to be seen here and there and, in the course of an hour’s travel, became abundant. The only one with which she was familiar was the chipmunk. All the others from the slim bright blacks to the striped russets and the white-tailed grays were totally new to her. They appeared tame and curious. The reds barked and scolded at the passing cavalcade; the blacks glided to some safe branch, there to watch; the grays paid no especial heed to this invasion of their domain.

  Once, Dorn, halting his horse, pointed with long arm, and Helen, following the direction, descried several gray deer standing in a glade, motionless, with long ears up. They made a wild and beautiful picture. Suddenly they bounded away with remarkable, springy strides.

  The forest on the whole held to the level open character, but there were swales and streambeds breaking up its regular conformity. Toward noon, however, it gradually changed, a fact that Helen believed she might have observed sooner had she been more keen. The general lay of the land began to ascend and the trees to grow denser.

  She made another discovery. Ever since she had entered the forest, she had been aware of a fullness in her head and a something affecting her nostrils. She imagined, with regret, that she had taken cold. But presently her head cleared somewhat and she realized that the thick pine odor of the forest had clogged her nostrils as if with a sweet pitch. The smell was overpowering, and disagreeable because of its strength. Also, her throat and lungs seemed to burn.

  When she began to lose interest in the forest and all pertaining to it, that regretful fact, she ascertained, owed its origin to aches and pains that would no longer be denied recognition. Thereafter she was not permitted to forget them and they grew worse. One especially was a pain beyond all her experience. It lay in the muscles of her side, above her hip, and it grew to be a treacherous thing. For it was not persis tent. It came and went. After it did, she, with a terrible flash, found it could be borne by shifting or easing the body. But it gave no warning. When she expected it, she was mistaken; when she dared to breathe again, then, with piercing swiftness, it returned like a blade in her side. This then was one of the riding pains that made a victim of a tenderfoot on a long ride. It was almost too much to be borne. Presently to bear it any longer was not possible. She would fall off the horse and walk. The beauty of the forest, the living creatures to be seen scurrying away, the time, distance—everything faded before that stab-like pain. To her infinite relief she found that it was the trot that caused this torture. When Ranger walked, she did not have to suffer it. Thereupon she held him to a walk as long as she dared or until Dorn and Bo were almost out of sight, then she loped him ahead until he had caught up.

  So the hours passed, the sun got around low, sending golden shafts under the trees, and the forest gradually changed to a brighter, but a thicker color. This slowly darkened. Sunset was not far away.

  She heard the horses splashing in water, and soon she rode up to see tiny streams of crystal water running swiftly over beds of green moss. She crossed a number of these and followed along the last one into a more open place in the forest where the pines were huge, towering, and far apart. A low gray bluff of stone rose to the right, perhaps one third as high as the trees. From somewhere came the rushing sound of running water.

  “Big Spring,” announced Dorn. “We camp here. You girls have done well.”

  Another glance proved to Helen that all those little streams poured from under this gray bluff.

  “I’m dying for a drink!” cried Bo with her customary hyperbole.

  “I reckon you’ll never forget your first drink here,” remarked Dorn.

  Bo essayed to dismount and finally almost fell off, and, when she did get to the ground, her legs appeared to refuse their natural function and she fell flat. Dorn helped her up.

  “What’s wrong with me anyhow?” she demanded in great amaze.

  “Just stiff, I reckon,” replied Dorn as he led her a few awkward steps.

  “Bo, have you any hurts?” queried Helen, who still sat her horse, loath to try dismounting, yet wanting to beyond all words.

  Bo gave her an eloquent glance. “Nell, did you have one in your side, like a wicked long darning needle, punching deep when you weren’t ready?”

  “That one I’ll never get over!” exclaimed Helen softly. Then profiting by Bo’s experience she dismounted cautiously and managed to keep upright. Her legs felt like wooden things.

  Presently the girls went toward the spring.

  “Drink slow!” called out Dorn.

  Big Spring had its source somewhere deep inside the gray weathered bluff, from which came a hollow subterranean gurgle and roar of water. The fountainhead must have been a great well rushing up though the cold stone.

  Helen and Bo lay flat on a mossy bank, seeing their faces as they bent over, and they sipped a mouthful, by Dorn’s advice, and because they were so hot and parched and burning that they wanted to tarry a moment with a precious opportunity.

  The water was so cold that it sent a shock over Helen, made her teeth ache, and a singular revivifying current steal all through her, wonderful in its cool absorption of that dry heat of flesh, irresistible in its appeal to thirst. Helen raised her head to look at this water. It was colorless as she had found it tasteless.

  “Nell…drink!” panted Bo. “Think of our…old spring…in the orchard…full of pollywogs!”

  And then Helen drank thirstily, with closed eyes, while a memory of home stirred from Bo’s gift of poignant speech.

  Chapter Seven

  The first camp duty Dorn performed was to throw a pack off one of the horses, and, opening it, he took out tarpaulin and blankets that he arranged on the ground under a pine tree.

  “You girls rest,” he said briefly.

  “Can’t we help?” asked Helen, although she could scarcely stand.

  “You’ll be welcome to do all you like after you’re broke in.”

  “Broke in!” ejaculated Bo with a little laugh. “I’m all broke up now.”

  “Bo, it looks as if Mister Dorn expects us to have quite a stay with him in the woods.”

  “It does,” replied Bo as slowly she sat down upon the blankets, stretched out with a long sigh, and laid her head on a saddle. “Nell, didn’t he say not to call him mister?”

  Dorn was throwing the packs off the other horses.

  Helen lay down beside Bo and then for once i
n her life she experienced the sweetness of rest.

  “Well, Sister, what do you intend to call him?” queried Helen curiously.

  “Milt, of course,” replied Bo.

  Helen had to laugh despite her weariness and aches.

  “I suppose then…when your Las Vegas cowboy comes along, you will call him what he called you.”

  Bo blushed, which was a rather unusual thing for her. “I will if I like,” she retorted. “Nell, ever since I could remember, you’ve raved about the West. Now you’re out West, right in it, good and deep. So wake up!”

  That was Bo’s blunt and characteristic way of advising the elimination of Helen’s superficialities. It sank deep. Helen had no retort. Her ambition, as far as the West was concerned, had most assuredly not been for such a wild unheard of jaunt as this. But possibly the West—a living from day to day—was one succession of adventures, trials, tests, troubles, and achievements. To make a place for others to live comfortably someday. That might be Bo’s meaning, embodied in her forceful hint. But—Helen was too tired to think it out then. She found it interesting, and vaguely pleasant to watch Dorn.

  He hobbled the horses and turned them loose. Then with axe in hand he approached a short dead tree standing among a few white-barked aspens. This dead stub was black, showing that fire had visited the forest. Dorn appeared to advantage swinging the axe. With his coat off, displaying his wide shoulders, straight back, and long powerful arms, he looked a young giant. He was lithe and supple, brawny but not bulky. The axe rang on the hard wood, reverberating through the forest. A few strokes sufficed to bring down the stub. Then he split it up. Helen was curious to see how he kindled a fire. First he ripped splinters out of the heart of the log, and laid them with coarser pieces on the ground. Then from saddlebag, which hung on a nearby branch, he took flint and steel, and a piece of what Helen supposed was rag or buckskin upon which powder had been rubbed. At any rate the first strike of the steel brought sparks, a blaze, and burning splinters. He put on larger pieces of wood, crosswise, and the fire roared.